Holly Wong
If you’ve been following us for awhile, you know we love color, installations, mixed media, and all things paint. Naturally, we are overjoyed to share the work of California based Holly Wong!
Wong lives and works in San Francisco, California. She earned her Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute. She creates installations, assemblages and works on paper, integrating non-traditional approaches with more traditional sewing and weaving techniques associated with the history of women, taking a modern and unconventional approach while also being deeply rooted in her history and culture. Wong’s artistic achievements are nothing short of spectacular, being awarded visual arts grants from the Integrity: Arts and Culture Association, Barbara Deming Memorial fund, the George Sugarman Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and a Gerbode Foundation purchase award. She has had over 50 group exhibitions and 10 solo exhibitions at venues such as the Berkeley Art Museum, the Arlington Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Korean Cultural Center, the University of San Francisco, the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in Vermont, the Visual Art Exchange in North Carolina, and the Evanston Art Center in Illinois. She is a member of SFWA Gallery in San Francisco, and A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.
Wong shares more:
I create paintings and installations integrating non-traditional approaches with traditional sewing techniques associated with the history of women. Using various materials such as food cellophane, dichroic film, tulle, organza, thread, paint and candle smoke, I strive to reconnect in myself as well as in the external environment what has been fragmented. My work is a constant process of assembling, deconstructing and then making whole once again.
Recent work has focused on describing the immediacy of needing to be in the present moment in order to avoid further environmental destruction. I believe that the psychic disconnect in modern times has resulted in a tendency to treat the earth as if it was a disposable resource. Through the action of sewing, I build and construct and then by cutting and resewing, structures reemerge again. My water color paintings and collages are a parallel process which capture moments of those ephemeral states. Working often within the context of memory and impermanence, I gather images, patterns and textures which I paint on paper and then burn with candle flame so that the images have a layer of smoke on the surface. I also layer with collage elements such as lace made out of paper, netting or other types of semi-permeable materials. Layering in this way, I build up the surface as images start to emerge through the materials. In many ways, these smaller works on paper are a microcosm of my larger installations; all of theseapproaches are about the biology of thought processes.
If you are ready to get lost in more of these dreamy scenes, check out more on Instagram and her website
Photograph by Al Wong
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